Presidents are not kings. Not only does this affect their powers in office, it also seems to influence their funerary habits—in particular, the distribution of presidential burial sites, as shown on this map. Why? Because dead royalty tends to agglomerate into dynastic clusters. Egypt’s Valley of the Kings has 63 royal tombs from the New Kingdom period alone, which lasted for five centuries until about 1000 BC. Presidential Gravesites: Accidental Egalitarianism The Basilica of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, held the remains of 42 French kings until 1793, when French revolutionaries…
